Zakia Jafri to get SIT report copy, co-petitioners plea dismissed

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Last Updated: Wed, Feb 15, 2012 13:01 hrs

Ahmedabad: A trial court here Wednesday passed an order allowing Zakia Jafri to receive a copy of Supreme Court appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) closure report on Gulberg Society massacre case.

The court, while accepting Jafri's plea rejected the plea of social activists Teesta Setalvad and Mukul Sinha, saying they don't have the locus standi to demand the report.

Jafri, wife of slain Congress MP Ehsan Jafri who was killed in the 2002 riots, will not only get access to the 600-page SIT report but will also get all the other documents pertaining to the case within a month.

The SIT had last week filed a closure report on the complaint of Zakia Jafri, reportedly giving a clean chit to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi.

Jafri in her complaint had sought prosecution of Modi, along with 57 others, for aiding and abetting communal riots. Ehsan Jafri was among the 69 persons killed in the Gulberg Housing society riots. Around 1,200 people were killed in the communal riots.

On September 12 last year, the Supreme Court had refused to pass any order on Modi's alleged inaction in containing riots in 2002 and left it to the concerned magistrate's court to decide the course of action against him on the basis of the SIT report.

In the petition, Zakia had alleged that Modi and 62 top government officials deliberately refused to take action to contain the state-wide riots, triggered by the February 27, 2002 Godhra train carnage.

The SC had further said that in case the magistrate decides to drop proceedings against Modi and others, he has to hear the plea of Zakia.

Jafri had told the apex court that a proper probe should be carried out by the SIT, headed by former CBI chief R K Raghavan, into her allegations of inaction and various acts of omission and commission by Modi and others during the riots.

The apex court in 2009 had earlier handed over the task of probing the case to SIT which submitted its report in 2011.